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Second MBA SSD failure in as many months

U

uk-mba

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 22, 2013
3
0
My Sept 2011 MBA had its 256GB Flash Storage (SSD) replaced just over month ago under applecare warranty. It worked fine for a few days but then started crashing / freezing constantly (same symptoms as before). Now for the second time in as many months the machine will not boot (Flashing Questionmark) and after resetting the PRAM and then OS X Recovery (Reinstall / Disk Repair) - no Mac HD is found.

I cannot believe I'm this unlucky with SSDs? Any thoughts on what may be causing the issue? Should I be asking for a MBA replacement or accept another SSD? (my applecare call is this afternoon)

Arguably this is not costing me any money but the time and inconvenience of not having my MBA is making me think of getting a Windows machine (that bad!!!)

:confused:
 
uk-mba said:
My Sept 2011 MBA had its 256GB Flash Storage (SSD) replaced just over month ago under applecare warranty. It worked fine for a few days but then started crashing / freezing constantly (same symptoms as before). Now for the second time in as many months the machine will not boot (Flashing Questionmark) and after resetting the PRAM and then OS X Recovery (Reinstall / Disk Repair) - no Mac HD is found.

I cannot believe I'm this unlucky with SSDs? Any thoughts on what may be causing the issue? Should I be asking for a MBA replacement or accept another SSD? (my applecare call is this afternoon)

Arguably this is not costing me any money but the time and inconvenience of not having my MBA is making me think of getting a Windows machine (that bad!!!)

:confused:
Click to expand...

maybe that's exactly what you should do... if nothing else it will remind you why you buy Apple products in the first place.

Sucks that happened...but it can happen. your first disk worked for 2 years and then died - luckily it was replaced under your applecare...the next one was a lemon and would be replaced either way under warranty. drives fail - even flash storage can fail. if it happens a third time i would make them look closer but the good money is that you just got very unlucky.
 
How full was the drive? Since SSDs have limited read/write cycles, it is best to try and keep them not more than half full.

Lou
 
flowrider said:
How full was the drive? Since SSDs have limited read/write cycles, it is best to try and keep them not more than half full.

Lou
Click to expand...

Eh? An SSD is not like a cheap bucket. You don't save anything by keeping it "half full". What counts is the number of times a particular memory area is written and re-written, which isn't a function of how full the drive is.
 
flowrider said:
How full was the drive? Since SSDs have limited read/write cycles, it is best to try and keep them not more than half full.

Lou
Click to expand...

Well the disk was around 80% full the first time but only 30% full the second. What was the same is the machine's fan was blowing and then started freezing (required reboot). The frequency of the crashes increased and then - no disk. Strangely when I monitored the CPU, it wasn't stressed?
 
uk-mba said:
Well the disk was around 80% full the first time but only 30% full the second. What was the same is the machine's fan was blowing and then started freezing (required reboot). The frequency of the crashes increased and then - no disk. Strangely when I monitored the CPU, it wasn't stressed?
Click to expand...

that sounds like it could be a heat displacement issue. had something similar happening on my old macbook. it would get CRAZY hot, run slow as hell and then not boot up until it cooled down. you could be frying the internals - i would open it up and make sure the vents are clear or have apple do that.

they would have told you if there was corrosion on the disk itself...at least i hope they would have when they opened it up.

as it were - I think Lou is alluding to the rule of thumb that you want to keep at least 10-20% of your disks empty..but that doesn't sound like it's your problem. i'm also not convinced it would causes disks to fail.
 
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